Walter Benjamin’s time in the town of Portbou, at the northern end of the Costa Brava, on the border between Catalonia and France, amounted to a little more than 12 hours. His memory, however, endures to this day.

The German Jewish thinker (Berlin, 1892), who on 26 September 1940 crossed the French-Spanish border in his attempt to escape the Nazis, in the hope of making his way to Portugal and a ship for America, died in this small town on the Catalan coast, and although the facts of his death were suppressed by the Franco regime for decades, since the restoration of democracy the truth has been recovered and dignified.